Re: New Nextbox Navigator

@Sailorman I can indeed confirm that Shomi fast forward controls are just as broke as the whole Navigatr. Four arrows on screen and only able to use one speed. What a piece of - oh, wait, we already know that...

Re: New Nextbox Navigator

This will go down in Product Management history as a claasic example of the perils of forcing something on customers without giving them a transiton/migration path. Plus, it did not help that the thing forced on us is quite lame, with no obvious benefits.

Back in my working days, as a product/service planner at Bell in the data area, I worked on a contemporary replacement for a WW II era teletype network called TWX. We proposed a customer MIGRATION/transtion plan to the executive who chuckled amongst themselves, saying "MIGRATION ? thats what ducks do !" In the monopoly era, Bell never thought much about moving customers from one service to a newer one, it just kept going and going with the old one.

I hope Rogers finds a way to provide a MIGRATION path, else a lot more ducks are going to MIGRATE somewhere else !

Re: New Nextbox Navigator

Shortly after Navigatr was launched, I contacted the CTRC by email seeking their assistance and referenced this thread.

On August 5 the CRTC forwarded that email to Rogers along with the following commentary.

Thank you for contacting us to express your concerns about your cable service with Rogers.

In light of your concerns and as a courtesy, I am sending a copy of your message to Rogers Cable Communications Inc., and asking the licensee to respond directly to you within 20 calendar days and to provide a copy of their reply to us for review. Should the review by CRTC staff conclude that further regulatory action is required, we will notify you.....

Rogers response received a few minutes ago ( names edited out).

Re: CRTC File 716298

Dear Mr. ................

Thank you for your email, which we received via the CRTC. We always welcomecustomer feedback as it helps us improve your experience with Rogers. You wrote aboutRogers’ recent software upgrade and PVR enhancements to our NextBox cable boxprogram guide. In your email you expressed concerns regarding the upgraded guide(called NAVIGATR) which had been rolled out to some of our customers.

On July 28, Rogers deployed the NAVIGATR upgrade for NextBox cable boxes tocertain regions in Ontario. Following this, some customers with NextBox 3.0 andNextBox 2.0 experienced issues with their PVR and/or guide.

As soon as customers called with concerns, we paused our roll-out in order toinvestigate. We determined these issues were not related to the design of the software,but rather to a technical human error at Rogers that occurred during the deployment ofNAVIGATR.

We appreciate your concerns about this and have taken steps to ensure the technicalhuman error is not repeated as the new guide is rolled-out to our remaining customers inOntario. Also, we do understand that some customers who were affected may have lostrecordings on their PVRs. While some of the shows may be available on Rogers onDemand, we can’t bring back all the recordings so we have offered affected customers acredit on their television service. This credit has been applied to your account. (Edit: after I asked for it)

On behalf of Rogers, thank you again for sharing your views and also for your loyalty toRogers. We always want to hear from our customers about what they like and wherethey think we can do better.

Sincerely,

J....... L...

Advisor - Office of the President

cc: CRTC Client Services

What a long winded load of "Navigatr". It takes them that long to say there's no deficiency with the code, we aren't going to do anything about it, and we're going to continue rolling it out ?

Re: New Nextbox Navigator

Many of us with Navigatr on our PVRs who have contacted C/S over the last month have requested our PVRs be rolled back to the old Guide while Rogers sorts out all the bugs (both critical issues and literally dozens of usability issues). We've all been told, "Not possible".

A thought came up to some of us, independently, especially those of us who are exploring our future tv service options: what would happen if we sold our PVR that has Navigatr on it to someone who lives in an area that doesn't yet have Naivgatr?

Would the old Guide magically be reinstalled, or would it be able to continue to use Navigatr, having essentially just skipped ahead in line of who gets Navigatr?

I put that question to a Tech Support rep this evening. To save others from wasting their time and Rogers' Tech Supports' time, I'm posting the transcript below. I think the discussing was rather interesting:

Rogers Tech Support chat session wrote:Rogers T/S: Hi, I'm [rep's name] from Rogers! How can I help you today?theClubhopper: Hi, I have a question about selling a PVR with Navigatr on it.. If I was to sell my 8642HD that has Navigatr on it to someone in Toronto, for example, where Navigatr has not yet launched, would that be a problem for the buyer?Rogers T/S: I am not sure, but I will definately look into this for you. Just to confirm you want to sell a pvr that has been updated to the new guide and want to sell to someone in Toronto where the guide has not been rolled out to yet?theClubhopper: yes, that's rightRogers T/S: I have just checked with our cable tech and what they say is that if they factory reset the box once they connect it in Toronto it will load up the old guide until the navigatr is pushed to that area.theClubhopper: Thanks for that reply. Can you please check with them why customers who are not happy with Navigatr and have requested their PVRs be rolled back to the previous guide have been told "Not possible"?Rogers T/S: Unfortunately they can not revert back to the old guide in the area. Once the guide is rolled out to all 4 areas no boxes will be able to go back to the old guide. It's a message that is sent out the the boxes from the network

theClubHopper: But Navigatr rollout has stopped.. because there are serious issues with it that have not yet been corrected. So it makes no sense that Rogers would knowingly push out a broken Navigatr product to customers again.Rogers T/S: it has stopped due to issues identified on the first roll out, they are working with cisco to make sure the next set of roll outs do not cause the same issues

Synopsis:

it is technically possible for the old Guide to be put back on PVRs than currently have Navigatr (after a factory reset).

Rogers won't push out the old Guide in areas in which already have Navigatr.

Navigatr rollout has only been stopped to areas that did not already get it, in areas that already have it, Navigatr (the same version) is still being pushed out to PVRs that do not yet have it.

A PVR that has Navigatr on it *can* be sold to someone in an area that does not yet have it, it will be reset and loaded with the old Guide

I recall that someone (sorry can't say for sure who) has previously/recently written that it is (or was previously) possible to call in and request a 'do not update' flag be put on your account. If that's still true, I'd think if you had a friend in another town that doesn't yet have Navigatr who was willing to help you out and if you were prepared to put in a ridiculous amount of effort to jump through all the hoops, and didn't mind having your PVR wiped again, you could technically continue on with a Navigatr-less PVR, indefinitely.

It would of course, be far simpler, and far better customer service for Rogers to just agree to push out the old Guide to customers who requested it, after they'd confirmed in writing (or via an "I understand" button on a webpage) that their box would be wiped in order to get it.

Re: New Nextbox Navigator

Thank you for the information. Many have wondered if Rogers has a complete list of the issues with Navigatr. Also, if you are preparing enhancements/corrections, we would like to know what will be included in each release. I have assembled what I consider to be a complete list of issues from the Comunity Forum, Digital Home and Facebook. I have grouped them as Problems - features which do not work, and Design Choices - features that many customers feel were not the best decision to meet customer needs. Can you or the development team identify which of these issues are under development for resolution in the next release? Thanks for your help.

Problems

1. In Settings, if you hide channels, then the power on channel does not set properly.If you don't hide any channels, then the power on channel works.

2. In Settings, the Related Content switch has no effect.Show/Don't Show makes no difference.

3. In List, within a tile, if you are deleting the last recorded episode of a series and there are no scheduled episodes, then the display does not refresh after delete.The episode remains on the display, however it has been deleted.Hit exit, and the tile is gone from the list.

Design Choices

1. Font size on tiles in List is too small and lack of contrast makes it unreadable for those with any kind of vision deficit.This affect the number of episodes, number new, program description (for single episode recordings).Within a tile, all fonts are too small in the Recorded and Scheduled tabs.In Guide, the font for channel name is too small.

2. For single recordings (not series) shows only the date of the recording, not the time, recording length or channel.

3.Progress bar only shows time remaining, not time since beginning.

4.No way to list all scheduled recordings.Must click on each tile for each series.

5. In the previous version, when you were watching a recording from a folder and hit Stop because it was over, you got a menu that allowed you to delete the recording, among other choices. In this version, when you hit stop, you are returned to the folder view, with the cursor pointing to the first recording in the folder. Since the folders are displayed in newest to oldest sequence, if you aren't paying attention, you might hit delete and delete the newest recording when you just finished watching the oldest. The recording you watched has a progress bar showing how much you have watched. You have to scroll down to that recording before deleting.

6. if you have watched all the recordings in a folder, and the next scheduled recording does not yet appear in the Guide, then it will not appear in the listings at all. If there are no recordings, and no scheduled recordings in the next week, nothing shows in List. This may become a future problem because there is no way to delete the scheduled recordings for a show that has been cancelled or has changed timeslots if you have watched all the episodes. Under RTN, it was possible to display all series scheduled, even if the show is no longer aired, and it could be cleaned up periodically. There is no way to do this in Navigatr, so over time, memory will be filled with series recording info that is never used.

7. In List, the choice of sort sequence (called filter in Navigatr) is not retained.If you choose to sort alphabetically, it will at some point revert to sorting by most recent.

8.In List, the Page Up/Down keys don’t work.Must use up/down arrow.Requires retraining the “muscle memory” from years of using page up/down.

9. After choosing to delete a recording, there is a message asking if you are sure you want to delete the recording.The default should be No, so you don’t accidentally delete by hitting Enter, instead of Yes, as it is now.

10. Sorting (filtering) alphabetically sorts by title, but does not group all shows with the same title together.Whether a title goes in a folder depends on whether the title is in the upcoming Guide information.If the program is not in the guide, then a separate tile is created.This is a problem when there are back-to-back episodes.If you record one as a series and one as a standalone recording, they are listed in separate tiles, even if you sort alphabetically.

11. There is no way to turn CC on and off on a 9865 with Navigatr while watching a recording. However, if you switch to a live TV show and press Info, then you will be presented with the More choice. If you turn on CC then go back to recordings, CC will still be on.

12.Because the “Subscribed Channels” feature was moved to the Guide from Settings, Hide Channels now is much more work because you have to hide unsubscribed channels manually.

13. For single recordings, the red dot showing that it is recording appears on the tile.For a series recording, there is no indication on the tile.Have to click on the tile and switch to the “Scheduled” tab to see if it is recording.There is no easy way to find what programs are currently recording.

14. In Search, the two lines of characters versus the block of characters in the previous version means it takes many more clicks to enter a title.

15. For a single recording, not a series, the only way to find the recording length is to start playing and note the amount of time remaining.

16. Start playing a recording. Before you reach the end, hit List, and look at a different folder. Exit list and finish playing the first recording, then hit stop. You end up in the folder you browsed last, not the one you just finished playing. If you hit the buttons too fast without reading where you are, you just deleted the wrong show.

17. In List position the cursor on a folder which is a standalone recording (not a series). Press Guide, as if you were checking whether a future program exists, and position the cursor on a program in the future. Press List to go back to the program you were positioned on in List. Press Select to Watch the program. Suddenly, you are back in Guide, scheduling the recording of the future program.

18. If you are looking for unwatched recordings while a recording is taking place, you won't find unwatched recordings for that series by looking at the tiles because the “new” indicator disappears while a recording of a series episode is in progress.

19. If you enter Rogers On Demand, look around, exit and then play a recording, the 3 minute skip will not work until you press stop and resume playback. This was a bug in the previous UI as well.

20. While playing a recording, hitting Info pauses the program and brings up the “Recorded” tab, rather than displaying the info at the bottom of the playback as in the previous version.

21. You need to have a few episodes of a series in a folder. Then, you view one of the recordings during the time period that the next episode is recording. So, you are recording an episode and watching a previous episode at the same time. When you finish watching the recording, you get kicked back to the list of recordings, except this time, the episode you just watched is at the top of the list, and the new episode (if it has completed recording) is at the bottom of the list. This is different from the normal Navigatr action, where the most recent episode appears highlighted at the top of the list, which may lead to accidental deletion of an unwatched episode.

22. In most recordings of soccer, the teams, score and elapsed time is displayed continuously in a bar on the upper left corner.

Now, with Navigatr, when you FF or Rewind, a scrolling banner with program title, channel number and name is superimposed over the game bar, completely obliterating it, and since there is also no elapsed time value provided on the progress bar at the bottom, makes it impossible to know how much time you have forwarded or rewound.

23. if you hit list or info while playing a recording, then when you come back, the progress bar will display and never disappear unless you hit exit.

24. Search does not find meaningful matches (even if the exact match is in the Guide) and the titles in the results are often too short to distinguish what is being suggested.

The search button functionality and capabilities are reduced comparing to the old Guide:

- There is no option to filter results to TV or RogersOnDemand

- When used in RogersOnDemand for TV shows - the view is not organized hierarchically by season/episode

- When used in TV showings, the list does not include all showings in all channels where it is available but just "selected ones".For example, searching for "The National" in my channel list shows the instance at channel 26 at 9 pm and the French "Le National" at 6pm on 613 but there is no mentioning the instance at 10 pm on channel 514 (which EXISTS in the Guide if I search manually where I KNOW I will find it!!!!

25. In the list of recordings within a tile, Page Up/Down does not work.to get to the oldest recording, you have to keep clicking down.In the previous version, Page Up/ down worked and would wrap around.

26In the list of recordings within a tile, you cannot see the date of the recordings at a glance.You have to click on each recording.

27. The vertical progress bar in the Guide is unnecessary and clutters the display.

28. The old guide let me "Set a Reminder"easily and at it's appointed time it would alert me to the fact that the Channel I selected would be coming on within 1 minute. After the alert, if I didn't respond, it would take me to that channel without me having to do anything. The new guide alerts me in a similar way, but forces me to take action by clicking either the "Watch Now" or "Dismiss" button. If I don't it click the "Watch Now" button, which is the default, it leaves me on the original channel I was on. I like to program shows in advance and then let the Guide automatically start the shows I have set up as reminders. It is a neat way to set up an evening's viewing schedule. If I stepped away or was distracted, the old Guide would follow my instructions and take me to the selected channel. With the new guide, if I fail to click the "Watch Now" action for whatever reason, and I can't remember what channel I selected as a reminder, I have to go looking for it again. So the new Guide forces to to manually select the "Watch Now" choice or if I fail to do that, search for my selection again.This is a huge step backwards in terms of ease of use.

29. So I'm watching a movie last night. I'm halfway through. My husband comes in and says what is this about? I hit info. When I hit exit the movie starts from the beginning.

30. When using On Demand, Info does nothing.

31.There is no way to delete all recordings without also deleting all future scheduled recordings.Recordings must be deleted one at a time.

32. In GUIDE, setting Filter Channels to "Subscribed" only works as long as you don't exit the GUIDE; next time you go into GUIDE, you have to reset the filter. This is similar to what happens with Manage Recording "alphabetically”.

33. In Settings, the Default Series selection of "Any day of the week" does not apply when you actually try to set a series to record; defaults back to "This day of the week only"

34. If you stop recording a show before it's finished (ie: maybe you accidentally set it to record), you have to stop the recording and then delete it in two separate steps rather than "Stop and Save" or "Stop and Delete" (something that only recently started working properly on the old guide!)

35. When adjusting the volume from the Nextbox, there is a box in the top right corner that shows bars. If I look closely, I see that above the bars are the words volume and the percentage level in numbers. This font is in black on the grey box, so you cannot read it with any dark background, and it can only be seen when the show behind has bright white image.

36. Go to Guide. Push the red C button to filter channels. Choose Subscribed channels. If you want to view ALL channels again, it remains on Subscribed channels only. No change occurs.

37. If Navigatr would simply change that status of a recording from "scheduled" to "recorded" when the recording starts, it would go loooong way to making it more user friendly. That way it would be easy to find and watch a program a few minutes after it starts (e/g/ ~10 mins for a 30 minute program and ~20 minutes for a 1 hr one to get caught-up by the end).

38. While watching a movie on Shomi last night that the skip forward control only works at one speed now. I used to be able to increase the speed I could scan forward or reverse from slow to fast. Now it just shows one diamond which can't be changed.